Military vehicles tend to have much longer service life than commercial vehicles or private vehicles, the service life of a military vehicle normally being a number of decades. During their life, military vehicles have numerous replacements of aging systems or components with items having newer technology. Occasionally, too, vehicles have special components retrofitted thereto so that the vehicle can accomplish a new mission. To test and demonstrate new or proposed systems and components, they are installed on vehicles from the military service""s active fleet. These vehicles may be shipped to laboratories or proving grounds for testing, and they may shipped to trade shows or to special demonstrations for key US Government officials.
The use of vehicles from the active fleet for this purpose has disadvantages. First, it reduces the number of units available to active military units. Second, installing new components or systems in existing vehicles consumes numerous man-hours, especially if components or systems must be removed and replaced after the test or demonstration. Third, the processes of preparing vehicles for shipping and shipping them are costly. Finally, the components to be demonstrated often can not be seen easily unless other parts of the vehicle are removed.
To address the foregoing problems, I have invented a demonstrator for displaying and testing new or experimental vehicle components. The demonstrator holds a multiplicity of such components, which can be easily added or removed. The structure is an open-frame exoskeleton having the overall shape of an extant military vehicle. The exoskeleton is made of aluminum tubes to which the components are welded, bolted or fastened by other known means. The open-frame nature of the construction allows convenient access to the components and permits them to be viewed easily from almost any direction. At the same time, the demonstrator reminds observers of a particular vehicle and shows the juxtapositions of components with each other and the vehicle. Further, the demonstrator is lighter than the vehicle it emulates and is thus cheaper and easier to ship.